Harbor by John Lindqvist (classic novels for teens txt) 📕

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As the tender reversed away from the jetty, Anders raised a hand in farewell to Roger in the driving seat. They were almost the same age, but had never hung out together. They always said hello, however, as everyone on the island did when they met. Except perhaps for some of the summer visitors.

He sat down on his suitcase and watched the tender as it moved backwards, turned and set its course for the southern point on its way back to Nåten. He unbuttoned his jacket. It was a couple of degrees warmer here than in the city; the sea water still retained some of the heat of summer.

For him, arriving on Domarö had always been associated with a particular smell: a mixture of salt water, seaweed, pine trees and diesel from the tank by the steamboat jetty. He breathed in deeply through his nose. He could smell virtually nothing. Two years of heavy smoking had sabotaged his mucous membranes. He pulled a packet of Marlboros out of his pocket, lit a cigarette and watched the tender as it rounded North Point, looking to the untrained eye as if it were dangerously close.

He hadn’t been here since Maja disappeared, and he still didn’t know whether it was a mistake to come back. So far he felt only the quiet, melancholy pleasure of coming home. To a place where you know the location of every single stone.

The thicket of sea buckthorn next to the jetty looked just the same as it always had, neither bigger nor smaller. Like everything else on the island, the sea buckthorn was eternal, it had always been there. He’d used the thicket as a hiding place when they were playing hide and seek, and later as a place to stash booze from the Åland ferry when he didn’t want his father to see it.

Anders picked up his suitcase and walked down on to the southern village road. The buildings in the area around the harbour consisted mainly of old pilots’ houses, now renovated or rebuilt. Pilot boats had formed the basis of Domarö’s relative prosperityduring the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Anders didn’t want to meet anyone so he took the short cut along the cliffs up towards the ramblers’ hostel, which was closed for the season. The track narrowed and split in two. The left-hand fork led to his grandmother’s house and to Simon’s house, the right fork to the Shack. After some consideration he took the left fork.

Simon was the only person with whom he had kept in regular touch over the last few years, the only one he had felt able to ring even when there was nothing to say. Anders’ grandmother rang sometimes, his mother less often, but Simon was the only one whose number Anders would key in himself when he needed to hear another person’s voice.

Simon was digging his patch ready for the autumn, and he didn’t appear to have aged noticeably since Anders last saw him, the winter when Maja disappeared. He was probably at the age when it no longer matters. Besides, he had always seemed to Anders to be the same age, which is to say really, really old. It was only when he looked at photographs from his childhood, where Simon was around sixty, that he could see the difference twenty years had made.

Simon put his arms around him and rubbed his back.

‘Welcome home, Anders.’

The medium-length white hair that was Simon’s pride and joy tickled Anders’ forehead as he rested his cheek on Simon’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Those brief moments when you don’t have to be a responsible, grown-up person. You have to make the most of them.

They went into the house and Simon put the coffee on. Not much had changed in the kitchen since Anders used to sit there during the summer when he was a little boy. A water heater had been installed above the sink, and a microwave oven. But the fire in the cast iron stove was crackling as it had always done, spreading its warmth over the same wallpaper, the same furniture. Anders’ shoulders dropped slightly, relaxing. He had a history and a home. They hadn’t disappeared just because everything else had gone to hell. Perhapshis memories gave him a licence, permission to exist here.

Simon placed a plastic box of biscuits on the table and poured the coffee. Anders picked up his cup.

‘I remember when you…what was it you did? You had three of these and a piece of paper that moved back and forth. Then in the end…there was a toffee under each cup. Which I got. How did you do that?’

Simon shook his head and pushed back his hair. ‘Practice, practice and more practice.’

Nothing had changed there either. Simon had never revealed any of his secrets. He had, however, recommended a book called Magic as a Hobby. Anders had read it when he was ten years old, and hadn’t really understood any of it. It did describe how to do different tricks, and Anders tried a couple of them. But it wasn’t the same as what Simon did. That was magic.

Simon sighed. ‘I wouldn’t be able to do that today.’ He held up his fingers, stiff and crooked as they held the coffee spoon. ‘I only have the simple things left now.’

He pressed his hands together and rubbed them against each other before opening them again. The coffee spoon was gone.

Anders smiled and Simon, who had appeared on the world’s greatest stages, performed for kings and queens, leaned back on his chair and looked insufferably pleased with himself. Anders looked at Simon’s hands, on the table, on the floor.

‘So where is it, then?’

When he looked up, Simon was already sitting there stirring his coffee with the spoon. Anders snorted. ‘Misdirection, I presume?’

‘Indeed. Misdirection.’

That was the only important thing he had learned from the book. That a great deal of magic was a question of misdirection. Pointing in the wrong direction.